19 March 2024, Tuesday, 9:57
Support
the website
Sim Sim,
Charter 97!
Categories

Destroy the Matrix

Destroy the Matrix

Putin and Lukashenka are accomplices.

The war in Ukraine worries Europe more and more, especially the countries on its Eastern border – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

It also worries residents of Belarus. The war made the West to pay attention to Belarus again, but not because of the ongoing repression in the “last dictatorship in Europe” and not because of ill-treatment of political prisoners, but because it saw a “peacekeeper” in Lukashenka.

The West made an incredible discovery: Lukashenka can help democracy in Ukraine. According to the discovery, the dictator, who has been torturing the people for 20 years, destroyed all democratic institutions and has been eliminating the Belarusian language and the national culture with full support of the Kremlin, is now able to stand up for democracy, freedom, human rights and national identity in Ukraine and fight bravely against Putin.

The relations of Putin and Lukashenka have become a popular theme among Western researches.

“Is that true that Putin and Lukashenka hate each other?” - analysts ask all Belarusians they happen to meet and even visit Minsk looking for an answer.

In the same way seasoned sovietologists asked about the health of members of the Politburo of the USSR Communist Party and relations among them. The Soviet Union collapsed, which came as a surprise for those sovietologists. It turned out that neither health of gerontocrats nor their intrigues mattered. What really mattered was people's aspirations for freedom and the political will of Western leaders to help people become free.

What relations can be between the two dictators – one of which is the last in Europe and the other is not the first in Eurasia? You scarcely find examples of friendship between tyrants in history. Dictators can only have relations, like in a gang. They need one another to organise and commit crimes. Putin and Lukashenka have the same relations.

It's not a secret that Lukashenka stays afloat due to Russian subsidies and political support. But the support in building the dictatorship in Belarus was provided before Putin appeared in Kremlin. Democrat Yeltsin, who has a zero popular support ahead of his re-election in 1996, persuaded Lukashenka to demonstrate the unity of the “fraternal” nations of Belarus and Russia. He needed it to present himself as a “collector of Soviet lands” to red voters, which made a significant part of Russia's population, if not a majority. Being seriously ill Yeltsin gained victory in July 1996 and paid Lukashenka by recognising the anti-constitutional coup that took place in Belarus in November of the same year. As a result of the coup, which speakers of the Russian Federal Assembly Y. Stroyev, G. Seleznev and PM V. Chernomyrdin helped to organise, Lukashenka became a dictator.

Yeltsin is said to have disliked Lukashenka, who, in turn, didn't hide he despised for the Russian president and dreamt of taking his place.

Boris Yeltsin got tired and quit, leaving his post to KGB officer Vladimir Putin. He also left him the tradition of supporting the dictatorship in Belarus by any means and continue to dislike dictator Lukashenka.

It seemed in the beginning of Putin's rule that Kremlin was about to run out of patience and Lukashenka's harsh public remarks about Russian leaders would weaken the support of the dictatorship in Belarus. It was the years when Western politicians, diplomats and experts told us that democracy would come to Belarus from Russia. They don't like to recall it now.

Putin later learnt how to tolerate Lukashenka's rudeness for the sake of his interests, which were presented to the public as Russia's interests. We'll learn details of these interests only after the two dictators are deposed, but the interests seem to be so lucrative for both dictators that they are ready to tolerate each other.

Inspired by the fact that his methods are used by his dictatorial neighbour, the “last dictator in Europe” continues to develop and prepare them for Russia. His latest innovation is a law on a tax on “social parasites”. In fact, it is forced labour, a favourite instrument of all dictators to control society. Belarus chose a creative approach and added that violators of the law won't be able to go abroad. “Arbeit macht frei” a slogan over the entrance to Nazi concentration camps read.

By the way, about concentration camps. Correctional facilities in Belarus do not differ from them much. Lukashenka recently ordered to set up new, special facilities for drug addicts and alcoholics with “unbearable confinement conditions”. Putin now has new ideas to be put into practice in Russia.

We can recall that in the Soviet Union which Belarus and Russia successfully reconstruct, it was dissidents who were labeled as social parasites, alcoholics, drug addicts and mentally ill.

Hostile relations between the two dictators resemble a play to the gallery, or, to be more precise, the Western gallery. It is for the Western audience that Lukashenka plays a role of being “independent” in relation to Ukraine. Kremlin even allows its dictatorial neighbour to play nationalism light: say a few words in Belarusian, not to arrest people at the beginning for wearing traditional embroidered shirts, vyshyvankas, and add some Belarusian musicians to a playlist of Russian pop singers. Putin, as well as Lukashenka, knows well the Soviet experience of using phony nationalism as a shield to eliminate the national elite and patriots.

The West is again ready to believe in Lukashenka as a “good” dictator or a “lesser evil”. They say Russia's aggression against Ukraine changed the geopolitical situation, which makes them look for a union with Lukashenka and close eyes to the deteriorating situation with human rights in Belarus.

The West again pretends that it is possible to deal with Lukashenka for the sake of helping Ukraine and prefers not to notice new Russian military bases in Belarus, Russian weapons and endless joint military exercises with the Russian army. Does it help protect the democracy, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine? Does the West think Lukashenka can seize Russian bases and aim S-300 missiles, which are supplied by Russia, at the Kremlin? Maybe it's time to see logic of actions rather than logic of statements by both dictators.

The two dictatorial neighbours will continue to demonstrate a dislike to each other. Lukashenka, who earlier held press conferences only for Russian journalists to complaint about Putin, has received the western press as a gift and immediately started to advise the US what it should do.

The period of flirting with the dictator will end tragically not only for the Belarusians, but also for Ukraine and Europe, first of all for neighbouring Poland and the Baltic States, because the dictatorship itself is a source of instability and unpredictability. In case of war, dictators will always be on the side of their accomplices rather than on the side of freedom and democracy.

It is true that Belarus is very important, strategically and geopolitically, for Europe, but only as a free and democratic state.

Lukashenka wants only money from the West today, because he is going to build new concentration camps. Putin doesn't have that kind of money, so Lukashenka has to take loans from the West. Loans for repression, not for democracy. And also for large-scale joint military exercises, like the manoeuvres of 2009, when troops simulated a nuclear strike on Warsaw and a tank breakthrough to Kaliningrad. They were held at the cost of a loan from the IMF issued for promises of reforms and democratisation.

Prominent Polish writer and philosopher Stanislaw Jerzy Lec said: “Dictators don't have force, they have violence.” This violence has spread outside the two dictatorships of Russia and Belarus and threatens entire Europe. Violence lies in the matrix of any dictatorship. In this sense, there is no difference between the greater and lesser evil. The matrix must be destroyed to give people freedom, otherwise it will continue to reproduce violence.

Andrei Sannikov, leader of European Belarus civil campaign, specially for Gazeta Wyborcza

Write your comment

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts